Classic Poem

CHAPTER XIX.

Avaunt, destroyer, with thy hungry jaws,
Thy thirsty heart, thy longing ashy bones!
The righteous live, they be not in thy laws,
Nor subjects to thy deep-oppressing moans:
Let it suffice that we have seen thy show,
And tasted but the shadow of thy woe.

Yet stay, and bring thy empty car again,
More ashy vessels do attend thy pace;
More passengers expect thy coming wain,
More groaning pilgrims long to see thy face:
Wrath now attends the passage of misdeeds,
And thou shalt still be stor'd with souls that bleeds.

Some lie half-dead, while others dig their graves
With weak-forc'd tears, to moist a long-dry ground;
But tears on tears in time will make whole waves
To bury sin with overwhelming sound;
Their eyes for mattocks serve, their tears for spades,
And they themselves are sextons by their trades.

What is their fee? lament; their payment? woe;
Their labour? wail; their practice? misery:
And can their conscience serve to labour so?
Yes, yes, because it helpeth villany:
Though eyes did stand in tears and tears in eyes,
They did another foolishness devise.

So that what prayer did, sin did undo;
And what the eyes did win, the heart did lose;
Whom virtue reconcil'd, vice did forego;
Whom virtue did forego, that vice did choose:
O had their hearts been just, eyes had been winners!
Their eyes were just, but hearts new sin's beginners.

They digg'd true graves with eyes, but not with hearts;
Repentance in their face, vice in their thought;
Their delving eyes did take the sexton's parts;
The heart undid the labour which eyes wrought:
A new strange death was portion for their toil,
While virtue sate as judge to end the broil.

Had tongue been join'd with eyes, tongue had not stray'd;
Had eyes been join'd to heart, heart then had seen;
But O, in wanting eyesight, it betray'd
The dungeon of misdeeds, where it had been!
So, many living in this orb of woe,
Have heap'd-up eyes, but yet their hearts are low.

This change of sin did make a change of feature,
A new strange death, a misery untold,
A new reform of every old-new creature,
New-serving offices which time made old:
New-living virtue from an old-dead sin,
Which ends in ill what doth in good begin.

When death did reap the harvest of despite,
The wicked ears of sin, and mischief's seed,
Filling the mansion of eternal night
With heavy, leaden clods of sinful breed,
Life sow'd the plants of immortality,
To welcome old-made new felicity.

The clouds, the gloomy curtains of the air,
Drawn and redrawn with the four winged winds,
Made all of borrow'd vapours, darkness fair,
Did overshade their tents, which virtue finds;
The Red Sea's deep was made a dry-trod way,
Without impediment, or stop, or stay.

The thirsty winds, with overtoiling puffs,
Did drink the ruddy ocean's water dry,
Tearing the zone's hot-cold, whole-ragged ruffs
With ruffling conflicts in the field of sky;
So that dry earth did take wet water's place,
With sandy mantle and hard-grounded face.

That way which never was a way before,
Is now a trodden path which was untrod,
Through which the people went as on a shore,
Defended by the stretch'd-out arm of God;
Praising his wondrous works, his mighty hand,
Making the land of sea, the sea of land.

That breast where anger slept is mercy's bed,
That breast where mercy wakes is anger's cave;
When mercy lives, then Nemesis is dead,
And one for either's corse makes other's grave:
Hate furrows up a grave to bury love,
And love doth press down hate, it cannot move.

This breast is God, which ever wakes in both;
Anger is his revenge, mercy his love:
He sent them flies instead of cattle's growth,
And multitudes of frogs for fishes strove;
Here was his anger shown; and his remorse,
When he did make dry land of water-course.

The sequel proves what actor is the chief;
All things beginning knows, but none their end;
The sequel unto mirth is weeping grief,
As doth mishaps with happiness contend;
For both are agents in this orb of weeping,
And one doth wake when other falls a-sleeping.

Yet should man's eyes pay tribute every hour
With tributary tears to sorrow's shrine,
He would all drown himself with his own shower,
And never find the leaf of mercy's line:
They in God's anger wail'd, in his love joy'd;
Their love brought lust ere love had lust destroy'd.

The sun of joy dried up their tear-wet eyes,
And sate as lord upon their sobbing heart;
For when one comfort lives, one sorrow dies,
Or ends in mirth what it begun in smart:
What greater grief than hunger-starved mood?
What greater mirth than satisfying food?

Quails from the fishy bosom of the sea
Came to their comforts which were living-starv'd;
But punishments fell in the sinners' way,
Sent down by thunderbolts which they deserv'd:
Sin-fed these sinners were, hate-cherished;
According unto both they perished.

Sin-fed, because their food was seed of sins,
And bred new sin with old digested meat;
Hate-cherished in being hatred's twins,
And sucking cruelty from tiger's teat:
Was it not sin to err and go astray?
Was it not hate to stop a stranger's way?

Was it not sin to see, and not to know?
Was it not sin to know, and not receive?
Was it not hate to be a stranger's foe,
And make them captives which did them relieve?
Yes, it was greatest sin first for to leave them,
And it was greatest hate last to deceive them.

O hungry cannibals! which know no fill,
But still do starving feed, and feeding starve,
How could you so deceive? how could you spill
Their loving selves which did yourselves preserve?
Why did you suck your pelican to death,
Which fed you too, too well with his own breath?

O, say that cruelty can have no law,
And then you speak with a mild-cruel tongue;
Or say that avarice lodg'd in your jaw,
And then you do yourselves but little wrong:
Say what you will, for what you say is spite
'Gainst ill-come strangers, which did merit right.

You lay in ambush, — O deceitful snares,
Enticing baits, beguiling sentinels! —
You added grief to grief, and cares to cares,
Tears unto weeping eyes where tears did dwell:
O multitudes of sin, legions of vice,
Which thaws with sorrow sorrow's frozen ice!

A banquet was prepar'd, the fare deceit,
The dishes poison, and the cup despite,
The table mischief, and the cloth a bait,
Like spinner's web t' entrap the strange fly's flight;
Pleasure was strew'd upon the top of pain,
Which, once digested, spread through every vein.

O ill conductors of misguided feet,
Into a way of death, a path of guile!
Poor pilgrims, which their own destruction meet
In habitations of an unknown isle:
O, had they left that broad, deceiving way,
They had been right, and never gone astray!

But mark the punishment which did ensue
Upon those ill-misleading villanies;
They blinded were themselves with their self view,
And fell into their own-made miseries;
Seeking the entrance of their dwelling-places
With blinded eyes and dark misguided faces.

Lo, here was snares ensnar'd and guiles beguiled,
Deceit deceiv'd and mischief was misled,
Eyes blinded sight, and thoughts the hearts defil'd,
Life living in aspects, was dying dead;
Eyes thought for to mislead, and were misled,
Feet went to make mistreads, and did mistread.

At this proud fall the elements were glad,
And did embrace each other with a kiss,
All things were joyful which before were sad;
The pilgrims in their way, and could not miss:
As when the sound of music doth resound
With changing tune, so did the changed ground.

The birds forsook the air, the sheep the fold;
The eagle pitched low, the swallow high;
The nightingale did sleep, and uncontroll'd
Forsook the prickle of her nature's eye;
The seely worm was friends with all her foes,
And suck'd the dew-tears from the weeping rose.

The sparrow tun'd the lark's sweet melody,
The lark in silence sung a dirge of dole,
The linnet help'd the lark in malady;
The swans forsook the quire of billow-roll;
The dry-land fowl did make the sea their nest,
The wet-sea fish did make the land their rest.

The swans, the quiristers which did complain
In inward feeling of an outward loss,
And fill'd the quire of waves with laving pain,
Yet dancing in their wail with surge's toss,
Forsook her cradle-billow-mountain bed,
And hies her unto land, there to be fed:

Her sea-fare now is land-fare of content;
Old change is changed new, yet all is change;
The fishes are her food, and they are sent
Unto dry land, to creep, to feed, to range:
Now coolest water cannot quench the fire,
But makes it proud in hottest hot desire.

The evening of a day is morn to night,
The evening of a night is morn to day;
The one is Phaebe's clime which is pale-bright,
The other Phaebus' in more light array;
She makes the mountains limp in chill-cold snow,
He melts their eyes and makes them weep for woe.

His beams, ambassadors of his hot will
Through the transparent element of air,
Doth only his warm ambassage fulfil,
And melts the icy jaw of Phaebe's hair;
Yet those, though fiery flames, could not thaw cold,
Nor break the frosty glue of winter's mould.

Here nature slew herself, or, at the least,
Did tame the passage of her hot aspects;
All things have nature to be worst or best,
And must incline to that which she affects;
But nature miss'd herself in this same part,
For she was weak and had not nature's heart.

'Twas God which made her weak and makes her strong,
Resisting vice, assisting righteousness,
Assisting and resisting right and wrong,
Making this epilogue in equalness;
'Twas God, his people's aid, their wisdom's friend,
In whom I did begin, with whom I end.